


After the Eschaton

by GlitchCritter



Series: persona non grata [1]
Category: Original Work, The Mountain Goats (Band)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied Car Accident, It's just sad okay, Other, lack of subtlety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25370029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlitchCritter/pseuds/GlitchCritter
Summary: For the days after you've damned yourself
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Nonbinary Character
Series: persona non grata [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1837216
Kudos: 1





	After the Eschaton

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily based on Neon Orange Glimmer Song by The Mountain Goats.

The pepper tree has been leaking a strange orange dust for years. Touch it with a single finger, and a plume of powder erupts that invariably ends up blowing into your face. There’s no discernible reason for it-the plants are watered, given an adequate amount of fertilizer, and never lack sunlight or the cool wind’s caress. There is no description of a disease with this symptom to be found in either a library book or the primordial cesspool of the internet. The plant still grows its cascading, oval leaves every spring and sheds them with its pulp-less seeds every fall. Nothing is obviously deadly or harmful- there’s simply something wrong. If you tried to figure out if it was merely superficial or something worse you’d have to hack into the tree itself, rip into its marrow, and kill the thing for certain.

Tam stares at it, swirling an ice-less drink that reeks of burning and bleach, and does not get up from her seat. Her face still is slightly reddened with a carpet’s pattern, complete with a small rectangle from where she woke up with her cell phone stuck to her face. When the noon-time light started to burn bright enough to permeate her addled senses, she crept to her feet, ascending through the stages of evolution until she could look in the mirror and argue she passed as a member of homo sapiens once more. 

She has a friend in San Bernadino, a few hours drive from here. A roommate from college, who laughed at all her jokes and whose moms sent food worthy of three Michelin stars. They kissed, once, after the over-stimulation of a house party left Tam quivering with her coat wrapped around her head to drown out the world, hiding in the trees behind the backyard. It was quiet and it was good. A tender comfort the friend had given to prove someone really did care for her, and would always be there if she would let them.

The next day, they both pretended to have blacked out and forgotten. Washed out each other’s lies with watery black coffee.

Their number is still on her phone, but she can’t remember their name. 

Oh, she could find it easily enough. Aside from the numbers of defending attorney, prosecutors, and everyone else caught up in the case, she only has a dozen or so contacts. Just a few wrong numbers, and maybe she’d get some kind of intimacy, some kind of comfort. A rope to grab on to and start on a slow struggling climb out of this hole. But no matter how often it crosses her mind in fits of drunken nostalgia and self pity, she has never reached for the phone.

A neighbor’s wind chime calls out into the day. Maybe there are angels watching, through the powder in the pepper tree, through the spider-webbed wrought iron of the bench, through the holes in the windows Tam covers in duct tape. Not giving warmth, not even sending condemnation. Simply sentinels, noting her actions with the same antipathy as a wandering cat. 

Tam wishes it was hotter, or colder, or just in any way unpleasant. But the weather is idyllic as ever, the days each tinted cerulean, and she doesn’t doubt they will remain that way even if she loses, and has to watch them fly past her from behind a tiny barred window. It’s hard, being a monster. Constantly afraid of the same punishment she desperately flings herself towards.

Tam smothers her thoughts with the last heaving gulps of her drink. Half of it flows down her chin, searing her skin. It feels like a gentle fire, cleaning away old pains, until it doesn’t. Then it just tastes like lukewarm Everclear, like the same kind of drunkenly high drive to a bodega she always used to go on, until the day she didn’t make it home. Until the day she knew no one would have the stomach to be near her ever again, no matter what she wanted.

The glass catches the light and sears her eyes with the glare. Without making a sound, barely flinching, she repeatedly slams it into the bench’s arm until it shatters. She takes the longest shard and saws it along her torso until a cut forms. Orange powder leaks from the wound, with all the subtlety she expects from this parable she calls her life.

**Author's Note:**

> The pepper tree leaking powder is real, but it went away after we started regularly watering it. I feel that also fits Tam's life pretty well.


End file.
